Wolfhunter River (Stillhouse Lake #3)(60)

“Momma never really said. Just that something weren’t right, and she needed to get help. I never paid her much mind. She was always on about something or other. She liked all them conspiracy-theory people.” Her voice sounds slow, almost sad. I wonder if she’s feeling some regret.

I ask a few more questions, but Vee seems tired now. Almost sleepy. She doesn’t respond with more than one-word answers or shakes of her head. Not even Lanny can get a rise out of her.

Finally, Hector Sparks says, “Ms. Proctor, I think we need to wrap this up. I really do need to be somewhere.” As if his client is keeping him from something more important. I feel a bright surge of resentment, and have to remind myself that he is, in fact, my boss at the moment. Company rules apply. He nods to the guard outside, who unlocks the door. Sparks gets up and walks out. Lanny hesitates, looking at me.

We’re out of time. I lean across the table as far as I dare to. “Vee, look at me. You need to tell me the truth. Did you kill your mother?”

She slowly turns her head and brushes her hair back. No smile now. “No, ma’am,” she says. “I wouldn’t do that. She weren’t a bad woman. She weren’t really there, mostly. Not for me.”

I don’t know if I believe her. I don’t know who I’m looking at. Or what.

“Are you going to be okay?” Lanny asks Vee.

Vee gives her a sad little smile. “Nicest bedroom I ever had is here.”

It’s more than a little sickening, because I’m pretty sure she means that.

“Time to go.” The guard’s impatient voice. He’s holding the door for us.

Lanny and I get up to leave. We’ve gone a couple of steps toward the door when Vee says, “Wait. Your name’s Lanny, right?” I turn toward her. So does Lanny. Vee is leaning forward, picking at a torn fingernail. A bright scarlet drop of blood wells up, and she lifts her finger to let it slither down her skin.

I instinctively put myself between her—even shackled as she is—and my daughter.

“I know who you are, Lanny,” Vee says. She’s staring past me. “Your daddy was a raper and murderer. Everybody knows that. They likely think you’re bad too.”

“And what’s your point?” Lanny, to her credit, doesn’t sound shaken.

“Just that you know what it’s like. I didn’t do this. I’m not a good girl, but I ain’t a killer. Not my momma. Not like . . .” Her eyes suddenly fill with tears, but she doesn’t cry. She blinks, and they roll down. I wonder if she has a born actor’s ability to cry on command. “It was dark in the house. I tripped. I fell over her and got her blood all over me. I put my hand in her.” I feel that like a gut punch. She pulls in a breath that sounds painful, and she bows her head. “That’s what happened. You wanted to know. That’s the truth.”

“Ms. Proctor.” The guard’s voice from the door is stern. “Let’s go. Now.”

I nod to Vee, and usher Lanny out. I still keep myself behind her, a shield between my daughter and a girl I’m still not sure I can believe.

“Mom?” Lanny turns to me while we’re in the air lock between the cells and the open hallway. “Do you think she’s lying?”

“Lying about what?” Sparks asks. He’s checking his phone.

He’d missed the last exchange. Too damn busy. I say, “If you want something to exploit for the defense, she says she tripped over her mother’s body in the dark and fell on her. That’s how she got the blood on her clothing,” I tell him. “Which you’d know if you weren’t in such a hurry to get to your next appointment.”

He blinks. “Ms. Proctor, she’s hardly my only client.”

“You got another one on trial for murder?”

He pulls himself up indignantly. “That’s not quite fair—”

“Unfair is being innocent and locked up in a place like this,” I tell him. “Look for high-impact spatter.”

“What?”

“Close shotgun blasts make high-impact spatter patterns, which might not even be visible to the naked eye. If she doesn’t have that pattern on her skin or clothes, it wouldn’t have been possible for her to have shot her mother at close range.” I pause. I lower my voice. “She says when she fell on the body, she—put her hand inside the wound. So it had to have been a pretty close-range shot to punch with that much force. Pellets spread over distance.”

“Thanks.” He makes notes. “I’m afraid to ask how you know this.”

“I make it a point to know a lot of things. Especially about forensics.”

I ask him about the people she mentioned who saw her the night before, and he says he’ll follow up. I’m not so sure.

“Mr. Sparks,” I say, “are you really going to fight for her? Or are you just checking a box here?”

He stares at me, and behind the oh-so-inoffensive glasses perched on his nose, his eyes look . . . cold. I’ve often heard lawyers referred to as sharks, but I’ve rarely seen one who looks quite so open about it. Then he blinks, and it’s gone. “I’ll do my best. And what’s important is that we believe in her innocence, isn’t it?”

Do I?

I honestly have no idea.